Let's Talk About Sex
by Dwimordene
Summary: Because with sex and politics, there's always more than meets the eye. 2007 movie consistent; AU for ROTF characterization. Sam, Mikaela, Bumblebee, Blaster, and Ratchet. Rating for theme. Complete.
1. First Contact

**First Contact**

Sam had been in the middle of his trigonometry homework and quite frankly on the verge of throwing the book out a window when his phone started frantically vibrating. Quickly, he dug into his pocket, fished it out, and began scrolling through an entire set of text messages that together spelled out:

_Sam, 'bot incoming – I'm on collection duty. Alert your parents and Mikaela – further instructions to come in case of emergency. Ratchet's your on-call back-up_. _B. _

Below his window, he heard an engine fire up, and then tires squealed a bit as Bumblebee backed quickly out of the driveway, reversed gears, and tore off down the street. Sam felt his heart knock painfully against his ribs, part hope, part fear, and all curiosity. It had been nearly a year since Mission City, and in all that time, not one single response to Prime's message had been logged. Granted, no one had been expecting one in under a year – 'Bee said it had taken a year for his squad to pick up his call when he'd initially discovered the connection between Archibald Witwicky and Megatron, and two more for them to reach Earth, and they had been close, in galactic terms. But Sam knew that the waiting was hard on his friends, nevertheless.

Now if only this were a happy ending to that wait...! He glanced down at the message once more, then sighed as he stood and flipped the phone open, quick-dialing Mikaela. He hurried down the stairs and into the living room, where his parents were standing by the window, staring out after 'Bee. They'd no sooner turned toward him than Mikaela picked up, and he frantically gestured for silence.

"Mikaela? It's Sam," he said, speaking not just to the phone but to his parents, as they looked on in confusion. "Listen," he said, "I just got a text message from 'Bee – they've got somebody new coming in tonight. He's already on his way out to pick up whoever this 'bot is."

On the other end of the line, he could hear Mikaela suck in a breath. "_Somebody finally got the message?" _

"Sounds like it. But they don't know who it is yet, and 'Bee said to warn you – if there's any trouble, he'll call. And if he does," he warned, eying his parents significantly, "we should probably be ready for it."

As it happened, however, fortune smiled upon them, for perhaps an hour later, Sam got another phone call. This time, as his parents clustered at his back, one leaning on each shoulder so they could read 'Bee's message all at once, the screen blinked to life with just two words:

_All clear. _

"Oh thank God," his mother sighed, and his father squeezed his shoulder. Sam managed a distracted smile, already hitting quick-dial on 'Bee's com-code. A moment later:

"_Yes, Sam?" _Bumblebee's voice sounded over the phone.

"So who is it? Is everything all right?" Sam demanded, and listened to the Autobot's rumbling chuckle.

"_Everything is fine. I'm on my way in with Prime, Ironhide, Blaster, and Slidesign as we speak._"

"Blaster and Slidesign?"

"_Yes – they're partners."_

"But you said it was just one signal," Sam said.

"_It was only the one signal. Almost got us all in trouble, since I wasn't expecting Slidesign to be lying in wait in case of attack," _Bumblebee added.

"Dude," Sam protested, "you can't just tell me that!"

"_Sam, they were being cautious, that's all. No one is hurt. Now, do you want to call Mikaela, or shall I?_"

And since clearly Bumblebee wasn't going to be moved to an explanation, Sam sighed, and replied, "I'll call her. You're sure everything's all right?"

"_Absolutely._"

"Okay, then, I'll see you when you pull in. 'Bye, 'Bee." With that, Sam hung up. And he stood there in the living room a few moments, eyes closed, before he opened them once more and began redialing Mikaela's number.

* * *

When 'Bee pulled into the driveway perhaps forty-five minutes later, Sam was waiting for him. Having called Mikaela, then been forced upstairs by his parents to finish his math homework, he'd eventually taken Mojo out to play fetch for awhile. Then, when even the chihuahua had grown tired of the game, he had scooped the dog up and flopped onto a chair on the porch, waiting for the telltale whine of a Camaro's engine.

Almost as soon as the Autobot pulled onto the drive, Sam was on his feet, taking the steps two at a time, Mojo following along.

"So? What's the deal with these guys attacking you?" he demanded, and he could've sworn 'Bee sagged on his tires. But then the Camaro rolled back a bit, and in just a few seconds, Sam was staring up at a robot who, even kneeling, topped him by a good yard or so.

Bumblebee leaned one hand on his knee and one fist on the ground as he lowered himself down to something approaching eye-level with Sam.

"It's as I said: they were being cautious. And they didn't attack me," Bumblebee replied, firmly, though his eyes were brilliant and he sounded rather amused. More than amused, actually – elated. "You needn't worry, Sam. I've walked into worse trouble before, and I had Ironhide and Prime backing me up. There was very little danger, unless perhaps to newly landed Decepticons."

Sam blinked, but then smiled a bit himself. "I guess not," he replied, eying his friend. Despite the relaxation of disguise regs, Bumblebee hadn't dropped his alt-mode while at the Witwickys' house since he'd first introduced himself to Sam's parents. Yet here he was, in full view of any passing car or neighbor who happened to look out the front window, apparently totally unconcerned about being seen. "So... did they say whether there were others coming?"

Bumblebee nodded, and if possible, his eyes actually brightened further, as a low hum emanated from the Autobot. "They did – and there are. They'll be maybe another year getting here, but they're coming!" That low hum rose a tone, as Bumblebee, with deep contentment, repeated softly, almost to himself as he looked skyward: "They _are _coming!"

* * *

As it had been a Tuesday night when the new Cybertronians had made landfall, Sam had expected to endure a long week, plagued by curiosity, until Friday night finally rolled around. That was the rule, made by his parents in an effort to ensure that he would get his homework done once they'd learned Bumblebee's true nature. Or at least, that was the ostensible reason. Since he could produce compelling evidence (and had done so) that he actually got just as much work done at the base as not, Sam rather suspected that it had been more because they worried that going to the old airfield put Sam at greater risk of attack.

But having come to realize that the Camaro living in their driveway was indeed a person, even if an alien, and that his 'family' lived out on the base, Ron and Judy had given Sam weekend privileges since Bumblebee's duty to him required him to remain near Sam or else find a substitute. Beyond that, Sam had been adamant that the other Autobots were his friends, too. Thus the compromise had been born.

However, given the present unusual circumstances, and that it had been nearly eighty years since Bumblebee had seen any others of his kind besides the surviving members of his squad or Decepticons out to hunt and kill him, Sam's parents had made an exception. Judy had given permission for Sam to ride along with Bumblebee that week, if it made it easier for Bumblebee to carry out his duty of protecting her son while also being able to settle in with the new squad members.

Thus Wednesday afternoon, the second school was out, Sam and Mikaela had piled into their friend's alt-mode and the three of them had quickly made for the base.

"So tell us about these guys," Mikaela said almost immediately. "Did you know them from before? Where'd they come from?"

"I've never worked with Blaster and Slidesign before, although I know Jazz did once," Bumblebee answered. "They're a team specializing in communications and had been assigned to one of the squads looking for the Allspark."

"So that's how come they're out here," Sam surmised.

"Not quite," Bumblebee replied. "They were actually assigned to search a sector about eighteen light years from here."

"That's... not close," Sam said.

"How'd they get here?" Mikaela asked.

"About sixty years ago, they tangled with a Decepticon company and in the attempt to retreat, ended up going through an unstable wormhole that warped each of them to different regions. Blaster isn't certain where everyone else of his team is, but on his way out the wormhole, he managed to deploy an omnidirectional subspace way-marker. He got a ping off two of them that way – enough to extrapolate the parabola the squad likely got dropped along and determine the closest point of intersection of their positions. By now, the other two are about a light-year or a little less from the Solar system. Needless to say, they'll alter course for Earth in response to Prime's message, just as Blaster and Slidesign did."

"And when they landed here last night, this Slidesign guy nearly jumped you?" Mikaela raised a brow.

"_Nearly_. Fortunately, Blaster is a comm officer and first rate signals analyst – he ran my signal and called him off." There was a pause, then: "I probably should warn you: Blaster's a little different from the rest of us."

"Different how?" Mikaela pressed.

"Well, for one, he and Slidesign aren't just a team – they're a symbiont team."

"They're a what?" Sam asked blankly.

"You mean like those fish that clean off whale baleen?" Mikaela demanded.

"Not exactly. It's complicated." 'Bee left it that, moving quickly on: "But on the topic of symbionts, you've heard Epps and Lennox talk about Scorponok?" And when both Sam and Mikaela murmured 'yes', the Autobot explained: "Slidesign is the same model of symbiont."

Sam frowned. "You mean he's a giant scorpion?"

"_No,_" Bumblebee corrected, rather emphatically, "he's a Kemtex model symbiont who exemplifies a case of convergent adaptive design."

"Huh," had been Sam's response.

"The reason I bring it up," 'Bee continued, "is that I know human beings have an instinctive aversion to arthropods and arthropod-shaped entities. But try not to act on that in this case, all right? Symbionts of his make tend to react strongly to other people's emotions."

When they reached the base, Bumblebee made straight for the med hangar, sliding to a smooth stop and opening his doors for Sam and Mikaela to exit. He'd just finished transforming when something long and low slithered out the door, chittering at them. Sam and Mikaela stopped dead in their tracks. For despite 'Bee's warning, hearing about a giant, mechanoid scorpion was not the same as being faced with one.

The scorpion – _Slidesign, _Sam forcibly reminded himself – swayed a bit before them, its 'tail' held high, and a pair of radar-like antennae flipped up from just behind the head to fix on Sam and Mikaela.

"Um... hi?" Sam offered after a moment, looking desperately up at Bumblebee as a wide-eyed Mikaela rocked back on her heels a bit_. _His guardian went to one knee and clicked at the symbiont, who clicked back, then gave a soft, electronic whine, backing up a pace or two.

"Slidesign?" a voice that neither human recognized called just then, and was followed a moment later by the 'bot to whom it belonged. Slidesign gave another series of clicks, then quickly turned and scuttled over to the Cybertronian, crawling up his leg and slithering between an arm and 'ribs'. The 'tail' wrapped about the stranger's torso as Slidesign hooked his pincers into gaps in pectoral armor and hoisted himself up so he could peer over the shoulder of his symbiotic partner.

"Hey, 'Bee," the newcomer greeted Bumblebee with a flash of the light panel at about his midsection.

"Blaster," Bumblebee replied, then gestured to his human wards. "May I introduce Samuel Witwicky and Mikaela Banes?"

Blaster turned towards them then, regarding the two with what seemed interest. Sam and Mikaela stared right back. For despite the fact that it was obvious, just by looking at them, that Cybertronians varied at least as much as, if not more so than, human beings did when it came to their appearance, this particular Cybertronian stood out among the other four Autobots.

For one thing, he was definitely on the large side – he was Optimus's height, easily, though not as bulky as either Prime or Ironhide. Or at least, so it appeared: whereas all the Autobots, and even most of the Decepticons, had appeared to be a solid mass of circuitry, vehicle parts and armor, this one appeared significantly lighter, like a few lengths of metal twisted or braided gracefully into an intricate, if 'airy', frame that fanned out into protective, curved planes. A pair of slender beams protruded from his back, not unlike Bumblebee's panels. What appeared to be his basic support structure was pretty clearly visible in a number of places.

He looked, Sam thought, just a little uneasily, more like Megatron in that respect than any of the Autobots, though unlike every other Cybertronian Sam had ever seen, his 'skin' was a scintillating silvery color, banded with strange red-brown swirls that wound all over him and seemed to converge on the Autobot decal imprinted in a definite, bold red on his chest. But he didn't appear to have any other decals – not even a modified one, like the Search and Rescue emblem that Ratchet bore. Nor was that all he lacked.

_He doesn't have wheels, _Sam realized after a minute's close scrutiny, perhaps a split second before Mikaela blurted out:

"You don't have an alternate form. Um." She bit her lip, flushing a little at the less than polite impression that must have made.

But either Blaster didn't yet grasp the nuances (or even the gross distinguishing features) of human greetings or else he took pity on their obvious bewilderment, for his facial plates twisted into an approximative smile.

"Actually, I do," he replied. "It just isn't one that's been trans-scanned to conform to human technology. So what I don't have is a disguise." A beat. "Sorry about that."

"Oh, no, no, it's fine – no problem." Mikaela was looking from Ratchet – who had appeared in the doorway of the med bay to watch the proceedings – to Bumblebee and back to Blaster again, as the inevitable conclusion came to her, and a slow smile, filled with wonderment, crawled over her face. "This is what you guys actually look like. Naturally, I mean."

"More or less," Ratchet confirmed, from where he stood leaning a shoulder against the door frame.

"How come you didn't scan anything on the way in?" Sam asked, curious.

"Haven't found anything that fits my specs," Blaster replied, back-beams lifting slightly, as if in a shrug, which caused Slidesign to chitter at him. "Sorry, Slider," he apologized, craning his neck a bit to chitter something in return. Then, glancing back at the humans, the Autobot said, "Speaking of Slidesign, I hope he didn't frighten you earlier. Ratchet mentioned there's a Terran species structurally similar to him that humans tend to fear. He won't harm you, though."

"'Bee said the same thing," Mikaela replied diplomatically.

"Slider really is pretty laid back," Blaster insisted, apparently eager to reassure them. Sam glanced at his guardian and swallowed any mention of near brushes with friendly-fire.

At just that moment, Ratchet straightened and stepped outside, gesturing for Sam and Mikaela to stand aside. "Well, you and your laid back other half need to finish out your systems test," the Autobot CMO declared. "So – get yourselves together. Let's check your transformation sequence."

"You're going to want to stand farther back," Bumblebee warned the two of them in a low voice, as he, too, backed away on an angle.

"You got it," Blaster told Ratchet, even as Slidesign dropped down behind his partner, his tail retracting from about Blaster's waist to the sound of multiple metallic _clinks! _Blaster grunted slightly, emitting a low hum and twitching his back-beams gently. Metal began to slide, and from somewhere in Blaster's armature, that strange five-toned sound emanated as the Autobot began to shift forms. Folding neatly to his knees, he placed his hands firmly on the ground before ventral and dorsal plating split, then shot upwards along reforming 'backbone' before opening out.

Sam wasn't sure what he'd been expecting – or rather, he knew precisely what he'd been expecting, which was why he blinked in surprise when Blaster was done. _What _is _he? _he wondered. Aloud, though, he said only, "So not everyone turns into a car?"

"No," 'Bee replied. "We're not all transports."

"Ah." Sam and Mikaela stared as Ratchet took a slow turn about the... structure... that Blaster had become, the medic's holo-screen up and running as he scanned the new arrival. Sam, trying to figure out how Blaster rearranged himself, decided that, weirdly enough, this was in some ways a little less strange than trying to imagine how a bipedal Autobot fit into a vehicular form. He could more or less see how Blaster tucked up into something like a handstand for maximum height and to support the—"array" was the only word coming to mind, which array was apparently most of his mass. It had a number of spiky protrusions on different axes, all of which more or less seemed to be braced on or built out of Blaster's back and legs... and wherever else Cybertronians tucked things. He thought one of the antenna-like protrusions was Slidesign's tail.

And now that Blaster was in his alt-mode, Sam could see that the apparently random red-brown swirls were actually nothing of the sort: they were glyphs that formed one continuous vertical sequence all along his surfaces._ Like a tattoo,_ Sam thought, wondering what it said.

Still, it was definitely odd. Ratchet, though, seemed happy enough, as he shook his right hand into some kind of meter and "plugged in" via a couple of ports. "How's your targeting?" the medic asked, and the entire top half of the array tilted forward, then back, swiveled side to side, then turned a full three sixty. "No problems focusing?"

"No," Blaster's voice came through clearly from somewhere in the depths of his interior, though he sounded just a little distracted.

"Self-defense?" From the underside of the array 'platform' a pair of rectangular 'cases' dropped down, then transformed into what appeared to be two twin sets of machine guns on swivel mounts. Ratchet hummed approvingly, then:

"Slidesign?" On cue, the symbiont's tail curled down, and some braces on the structure unlocked as other parts began sliding about. Then Slidesign landed on the ground in his scorpion form, weapons spinning up, tail-prongs extended as electricity crackled along their sharp-edged surfaces. The CMO's engine gave a pleased rumble.

"Power flow isn't showing any anomalous fluctuation. Give me a ping," Ratchet ordered, watching as lines on what appeared to be a graph of some sort spiked neatly before he made the screen disappear. "Looks good," the medic said. Pulling his hand free, he rapped his knuckles against a support strut.

Blaster said nothing for a moment, but then, with a soft, electronic whine, he began changing back into his robotic form. Sam took an involuntary step back as support struts retracted, and then the comm officer rolled smoothly out of his stance, like a gymnast somersaulting. Slidesign, however, didn't even wait for him to finish moving or transforming, hastening to crawl back into place somewhere on Blaster's back, though the angle was wrong for Sam to be able to see exactly where he fit.

"I'll log you as duty-fit and inform Prime," Ratchet told him, and his lights flashed a quick sequence at the other. "Welcome to the squad."

"Thanks. Good to have one again," Blaster declared, shaking out his joints before turning to 'Bee and the two humans once more. "So," he said, with enthusiasm, "let's talk. Tell me about this planet of yours."

hr

Blaster, as it turned out, was a lively 'bot. Whether by nature or as a result of a long, lonely, and uncertain trek through space in an effort to rejoin his sundered brothers, he was talkative, pressing Sam and Mikaela for any number of details on any number of subjects, not always in any order that made sense to the two human teenagers. 'Bee, however, appeared unfazed by the apparent chaos, he and Blaster seeming instantly to bond over a common strong streak of curiosity. Blaster was also, as they discovered, another lover of music.

"It's a comm 'bot thing," he told them. "I think it's in the design specs – every 'bot dedicated to signals analysis and communications has to love music. It is, as they say, _written_."

So he had said, and proceeded to interrogate them on everything musical, from their favorite bands to musical forms to different scales and musical forms (Bumblebee had ended up being more help on that topic than either Sam or Mikaela) to the politics of the American recording arts industry.

"Blaster seems like a pretty cool guy," Sam commented that evening, as Bumblebee drove him and Mikaela home.

"He's a lot like Jazz," Bumblebee replied, sounding just a little wistful, before he added, in a firmer voice, "Which means I probably should avoid taking you up to visit with him until I know you've done your work. Your parents may not be so tolerant otherwise, Sam!"

"I've got the whole night!"

"Yeah, and it's senior year," Mikaela added.

"And you'll finish well or Judy will be after me with her bat," Bumblebee replied. "I'm serious, Sam! And you, too, Mikaela – I think it would be best to wait until you were both finished before heading up to the base. Something tells me that Blaster won't be able to leave well enough alone, and he'd have no lack of conspiracy from you two!"

"We'll get it done, 'Bee, no sweat," Sam replied.

"I never do."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean."

A slight, satisfied rumble greeted his exasperated tone. "And you know what I mean," the Autobot replied. "So, finish early tomorrow and we can visit. Otherwise, I'll wait 'til the weekend. The two of us likely wouldn't have much in the way of common deployments in any event, so it won't make much of a difference if I keep to routine." 'Bee sounded rather disappointed by this last, and Sam and Mikaela exchanged a look.

"I think," Mikaela said, mouth twitching just slightly, "that we've just been blackmailed into studying."

"Yeah, I'd say so," Sam replied, ignoring Bumblebee's mock-indignant chirp. "All right, 'Bee, you got it – we'll get the homework out of the way so we can all take advantage of Mom and Dad easing up on the regs for a week. Wouldn't want you to have to hang around the driveway all afternoon!"

* * *

TBC...


	2. Syntax Sub Rosa

**Syntax Sub Rosa **

Sam and Mikaela were as good as their word about the homework. Moved in part by their own interest, and in part on 'Bee's behalf, they were ruthless. They spent their lunches in the library with their heads together, eating with one hand while doing as much of the homework from their morning classes as they could. As soon as the last bell rang, they were back in the library until they were shooed out by the librarians. 'Bee would take them to Sam's house, where Mikaela would call her grandmother to tell her where she was and when to expect her home, before joining Sam at the table to hit the books once more. Sam's parents were ecstatic.

As soon as they finished, usually after dinner, they would head out with Bumblebee again to spend a few hours on the base before racing home just in time to make curfew. It was exhausting, but there were far worse ways to spend an evening, after all.

Blaster's arrival had everyone excited, for one thing – hard as it could be to read Cybertronians, there was no mistaking the charge to the air. One hesitated to say "giddy" of beings that weighed in the tons, but...

"It's true," Mikaela said, lips twitching as she watched Ratchet and Blaster at work on their main console's communications grid on a Saturday afternoon. Sam nodded his agreement. The two humans were taking a quick break from their shared labors, observing as their cybernetic friends pressed on, and comparing whispered notes on recent changes to the atmosphere around the base.

The tangible proof that the Autobots were not alone, and the news that there were more 'bots inbound, had had even Optimus walking a little taller (if that was actually possible). There was definitely a sense that everyone was counting down 'til the next signals should shout down their comm lines. Blaster himself no doubt contributed more to the mood than just news – he seemed a fundamentally cheerful sort and the effect was a palpable uplift on base. 'Bee and Ratchet had obviously quickly been won over by their new comrade's sunny disposition; for his part, Blaster seemed quite pleased, not just to have company again, but to have _their _company, chatting easily with both of them on whatever seemed to come first to mind.

He even managed to charm Ironhide, though "charm" was perhaps as poor a choice of word as "giddy": there was nothing charming about a pair of Cybertronians in an all-out sparring match, complete with "safety" modes engaged so close-range "fire" could be "exchanged." Ratchet, who had assigned himself the task of refereeing and keeping track of weapon-inflicted "damage," had provided Sam and Mikaela with a perch on his light mountings that Friday afternoon. From that safe position, the pair of them had watched, holding their breaths, worried that the round was tipping over into hostility.

For Blaster had all of Optimus's height, and then some, and if he wasn't as heavily armed as Ironhide, he was definitely no Ratchet. Not that Ratchet was so bad a fighter, so far as either Mikaela or Sam had ever been able to tell, but he quite evidently didn't go at it with the relish that his more pugnacious brethren did. Blaster, apparently, was more a 'bot after Ironhide's metaphorical heart. Ratchet might have denied the comm officer even the restricted use of his electronic warfare capabilities for the sake of vulnerable human organs, but Blaster seemed simply to take this as an excuse to hit harder, and especially once Slidesign was deployed, the weapons specialist had had his hands full.

Not that this appeared to have upset Ironhide – on the contrary, he'd rarely seemed so pleased, even to the point of giving Blaster a brief nudge with a rather battered shoulder guard afterwards in what was possibly the most overtly chummy gesture the two humans had ever seen him make. Mikaela and Sam, each seated over one of Ratchet's shoulders, had exchanged rather surprised glances over the medic's head at that. They had been even more surprised when Ratchet hadn't snarled at his two comrades for pummeling each other right into his repair bay for the night.

But in addition to bringing good tidings, to say nothing of a night's work for Ratchet, the communications specialist had been preoccupied since landing with improving the Autobots' comm system. Almost as soon as Ratchet had cleared him for duty, he had begun setting his domain to rights, or rather, getting the communications array up to the standard he considered minimally acceptable. That was proving something of a challenge given the technology that was available to him, but he'd declared himself in need of a challenge.

"Sixty solar years riding down the back end of space with nothing more interesting than microwave white noise and degraded old telecast signals?" He'd shaken his head, and electricity had arced between his fingertips as he'd powered up some tool. "Gotta blow the rust off!"

Thus far, they'd been working on the primary processing for almost three days to accommodate incorporating Blaster and his gear into the works during his shifts, and not even getting smacked around by Ironhide was slowing him down. Indeed, the comm officer was eager to try getting a few more upgrades in place for the secondaries, too, provided he and Ratchet could manage to fabricate the parts on budget out of what they could get from human suppliers.

As usual, Ratchet had happily taken the opportunity to draw Mikaela into the job, and Sam had tagged along in order to hold the flashlight, as he'd said. Not that it was needed – Ratchet alone had enough lights and wattage to illuminate a small parking lot, and he and Blaster, as they worked, would occasionally blinker messages at each other. At which points, Mikaela would sit back and remind them, "Guys? Strobe lighting."

"Sorry," they would apologize, and quickly redirect a steady set of beams.

That left Sam to struggle to follow the technical shop talk and respond whenever an actual conversation turned his way. Other than that, he marveled at Mikaela happily crawling around in the wires with the two 'bots. She might be far from understanding everything, but she clearly understood a great deal more than Sam, to whom a transistor was as good as a transformer and both were indistinguishable from a transducer.

Now, though, Blaster began disconnecting himself from the various wires and 'jacks, as Ratchet rose from crouching by an open panel.

"Break time," Blaster announced, running a finger around the edges of a data-port at the back of his neck and seeming to wince slightly. Slidesign, whose place on the comm officer's person had finally been discerned as right over his 'spine', tail and legs 'socketed' into 'ports' that radiated out from that central column, gave a short chirrup. He then pulled free of his partner and dropped to the ground. Electricity discharged into the floor, making Sam's hair stand a bit on end as he watched current arc from leg to leg, all the way down Slidesign's body as Slidesign shook them out in pairs, in succession. Apparently, the symbiont was just as grateful for the rest as his partner and Ratchet were.

"I need to check those patch-welds I did last night on Ironhide anyway," Ratchet said, as he closed the panel. Eying Blaster, he added, "Now that you two have gotten each other's measure, I'm restricting full combat simulations – we don't yet have the tech-base here for a regular parts supply, and especially on hydrocarbon rations, my internal fabricators can only generate so much! And I'm definitely ill-equipped to supply a Kemtex model with replacements."

Blaster, whose plating was still quite as dented as Ironhide's after yesterday's match, gave a contrite hum and flash of lights. "Didn't think of that, doc. Sorry!"

"Just don't kill each other, is all I ask," Ratchet replied, then nodded to Sam and Mikaela and took himself off to find their weapons specialist. Blaster looked over at the two humans, then asked:

"Speaking of hydrocarbons and rations, I think I'm going to take advantage of the sun while it's still up. Want to join me 'til 'Bee gets out of that tactical simulation he and Prime have going?"

"Sure," Sam replied, and Mikaela nodded, cracking her back a bit.

Some little while later, therefore, the three of them – or the four of them, Sam still wasn't sure how to count Slidesign and Blaster – were seated out beneath a late afternoon's sun, on the edge of 'the range.' That put them a little further out of line-of-sight telecommunication signals and so made for a bit more of a break for the comm officer, whose armor, they'd learned, contained a set of layers designed to be especially sensitive to those sorts of transmissions. Slidesign almost immediately hunkered down, tail curling about himself, and his blast shield snapped shut to the attendant sounds of electronics powering down. Blaster gave his symbiont a smile and a low thrum emanated from him as he ran a finger lightly down his partner's back plating.

"You and me, both, Slider," he declared.

"Is he okay?" Mikaela asked, frowning a little.

"Yeah, just it's been a heavy few days and you may have noticed," and Blaster's tone grew wry, "we both got a bit dinged up last night."

Mikaela wrinkled her nose. "I'm still surprised Ratchet didn't blow a fuse over that," she replied. Blaster lifted a back-beam – the equivalent, apparently, of a one-shouldered shrug.

"He was probably expecting it. New squad members usually get tested by everyone to see how they fit into the team in the first couple of days. 'Hide wouldn't have been doing his job if he'd pushed me any less hard than he did – not that I'm complaining!" Brilliant eyes and a low, wicked hum underscored what probably counted as an evil grin among Cybertronians.

"So how are you? Fitting in, that is?" Sam asked, as he dug around in his pocket after a packet of peanuts. Ripping the top off, he shook a few out, then held the bag out to Mikaela. "Brain food," he said in an undertone, and she gratefully accepted.

"Pretty well, I'd say. Prime's got a tight, top-rate team – wouldn't expect otherwise, especially when he had Jazz to back him up," Blaster said, a note of sadness entering his voice. "Wish we'd been lucky enough to meet up again."

There was a short, respectful silence at that. Though Sam and Mikaela hadn't really gotten a chance to know Jazz, beyond a few words and his obvious courage at Mission City, they had also been around his surviving comrades long enough to have a sense of what they'd missed – of what everyone missed. Blaster let his vents cycle once, but then seemed to put that grief carefully to one side.

"Anyway, if you can hack it, there's nothing better than working with a unit like that. They haven't had a real comm officer for some time, and I haven't had to do much heavy lifting since my little trip down the wormhole, so it's a good match," Blaster concluded, then added a little ruefully: "I just have to get my power relays used to the amp-load again!"

"I gotta say," Sam chuckled, "it's kind of nice, in a small, petty way, to know that you still have to practice to be good at what you're doing, 'cause I was really starting to feel inadequate, here."

"'Become every day, in all things, your own way,'" Blaster intoned, eyes glowing with amusement, and gave his chest a tap. Or rather, he gave one of the glyph-swirls a tap. Mikaela cocked her head thoughtfully.

"Is that what that says?" she asked.

"Yup."

"Is that, like, some kind of fortune cookie thing?" Sam asked.

Blaster was silent, apparently running "fortune cookie" through Google or some other search engine. After a moment: "Ah. No, not quite, though thanks for that one – in the history of worldview collisions, this has to be one of the funnier ones!" he said, chortling a bit. "Guess that's proof positive I'm no poet!"

"So it's a poem?" Mikaela was clearly intrigued, and Sam, too, sat forward a little.

"Mm-hm. A line out of a poem. One of Cybertron's preeminent poets composed it, oh, about a hundred years before the war officially broke out. It wasn't all that popular at the time, but I always liked his more obscure stuff. Unfortunately," and a low growl made the words grate on each other, "so did Megatron once he found it. Alethionix always had an edge to his writing, and the rebels really picked up on it for awhile. You can imagine what happened."

"What did happen?" Sam asked.

"What always happens when some dangerous faction gets its claws on art – everyone else starts wondering what's in the work that makes it fit so well with the radical crazies." Blaster shook his head, back-beams twitching slightly in an agitated fashion. "But like I said, I'd always liked his work, and damned if I was going to let the 'Cons just _have _it. Slaggers already had some of our best voices in their ranks, they weren't getting_ this_ one." He brushed at one of the swirls lightly, eyes blazing intensely at the memory. "Used to get me quite the few looks in the ranks, especially with the decal right in the center where, you know, no one could ignore the juxtaposition.

"But," he said, the blaze fading to a more reflective glow as the sharpness drained from his voice, "that was a long time ago. People cared more about that sort of thing, then – it's hard to fight for a few lines of poetry when you're just looking to survive."

"Where does it start?" Mikaela asked, after a short, slightly awkward silence. Blaster looked a question at her, and she gestured to the swirls.

"Oh. In this form, here." Blaster indicated his right ankle, then followed a line as it wove up his leg. "Got the qualifier here, then you go around to my back and under Slider, then up the left arm, across my chest and down my left leg."

"Can anyone even read that when you're a robot?" Sam asked, skeptically.

"Sure. Trans-scan technology can do more than just transform us. We're good at putting shapes together – you should see what we can do with Rubik's cubes!"

Sam snorted at that.

"But you don't always write like that, right?" Mikaela asked.

"No. And actually I didn't form them to be like this – I formed them to make sense on my alt-mode, since I spent more of my shifts in that form than in this one," Blaster said. "What you see now is just the result of transformation shifting plating and parts around. But some people used to use it for artistic reasons, and you can use this sort of 'scramble' effect in certain kinds of layered encryption."

"Huh," Sam grunted. "Cool."

"Do you think we could learn to read them?" Mikaela asked suddenly, looking up at Blaster. "When they're not scrambled?"

The comm officer shook his head. "I've been over the work Prime and Ratchet have been doing with your AI labs, and I've talked to the couple of military linguists assigned to us since I got here. You don't have the technology to implement automatic transl – " he began.

"Not computer translators," Mikaela interrupted. "I mean, could you teach _us_?"

Blaster frowned. "_You_ want to learn Cybertronian? Directly, without an interface?"

"Well, Ratchet's always running that holo-screen – he tells me what's on it, but..." She shrugged. "It'd be nice to learn." The comm officer gave a contemplative little warble.

"It's... an interesting thought. I've never had to teach anyone Cybertronian before – not sequentially, in real time, though I suppose there isn't a reason why you couldn't learn to read it..." Blaster mused, back-beams lifting as he considered the idea, though he warned: "You realize you couldn't ever speak it unless you had a prosthesis of some form? Your vocal apparatus is completely unsuited to the language."

"That's okay," Sam quipped instantly. "Ask Mikaela: Three years of French and I still suck at pronunciation anyway." Mikaela rolled her eyes and gave him a light smack on the arm.

"Football, French – I didn't push you into those, 'ladiesman,'" she replied, though she was smiling as she said it. Sam just coughed and ran a hand through his hair.

"If you're truly interested in learning to read, then let me think about it." Blaster seemed to brighten at the notion of a new project. "Maybe we can try tomorrow. For now, though," he lifted his chin, flashing his light at Bumblebee, who was approaching, "I think you two are wanted back at your homes." He rose, and so did they, dusting off their jeans.

"See you tomorrow, then," Sam said, and Mikaela waved to him.

"I look forward to it," Blaster replied.

* * *

The next morning, the pair returned to the base to find the communications officer as good as his word, and twice as enthusiastic, despite his uncertainty.

"So how come you've never had to teach anyone Cybertronian before?" Sam had asked, curious, as he and Mikaela had settled themselves on the roof of a 'small' storage shack onto which Blaster had lifted them.

"When you have a translation program like ours, once sufficient data points have been input and processed, the major structures and vocabulary are all there for you almost instantaneously," Blaster had explained. "It's like a Turing machine, in a way, except... well, never mind." He waved away what had promised to be a lengthy and complicated explanation. "The point being, we don't consciously learn languages sequentially, in real time, like you do. So when we deal with non-Cybertronian societies, we learn their language first just because it's faster. If we find that their AI has made the break-through to complex quantum processing, then we can feed them the translational keys from our own program, and they can use their AI to understand us just as easily as we understand them. The major work is done."

"And nobody's ever asked you to teach the language otherwise?" Mikaela asked.

"Can't say they have. Maybe someone, somewhere has asked some Cybertronian to do it, but – " this being said with a flick of back-beams that seemed to dismiss such hypothetical endeavors and persons " – if you've got the ability to translate like we do, why bother? And there really hasn't been much opportunity since the war for that sort of pursuit. Everyone's just been trying to survive." Blaster hummed softly. "Anyhow, the long and short of it is that code-cracking is probably the closest analogue to learning or teaching a language in my experience, so you'll have to bear with me."

"You can't be worse than Monsieur Franzen," Sam had assured him.

"We'll see," had been Blaster's reply.

* * *

Some hours later, Sam and Mikaela wandered off to eat lunch, shaking their heads and rubbing at their ears.

"Wow," Mikaela said, pressing at the point just before her ears to stop the throbbing.

"Yeah," Sam agreed, as he sank somewhat dazedly down onto the grass in the shadow of Hangar D and pulled an apple out of his lunch bag. Somehow, listening to Blaster lecture all morning left _his _throat feeling dry and scratchy!

The comm officer had spent much of that time going through the three glyph series of written Cybertronian, with occasional input from Bumblebee, who'd hung about, intrigued by the project. As the two teenagers had quickly discovered, Cybertronian made Japanese, with its three scripts, appear as the very image of simplicity. Sam had attempted to take notes and had ended up with the following:

- ideograms: 64 basic, 512 'extended'

- syllabic glyphs: 96 vocals (incl.s vocal clicks BUT no eng./generator noises-- emo's)

- word brackets – holds syllables in single word together

- military series – short-hand, pictographs for common words, none of below...

- scale notation – 'polyphone' voice, what note(s) per syllable

- rising (´)/falling (`) /rise-then-fall (~)/fall-then-rise (u) notation

- timing notation 1 – between syllables

- timing notation 2 – duration of syllables

- Pentatonic... base five... harmonics ... slang???**?????**

All in all, it was a writing system that made practical sense only if you didn't have to learn it, Sam thought.

Blaster, in his enthusiasm, had tried to explain _everything,_ which was admirable but resulted in a chaotic, indigestible flood of information. At about the point where he'd gone off about pentaves, harmonics, and tritonic 'slang', he had utterly lost both of his pupils, neither of whom were musicians, and consequently hadn't had the faintest notion what he was talking about.

Sam gathered in the end that every syllable symbol could take every scale note, that the ideograms didn't take timing two notations, and that if you put it all together in columns, you got different words that sounded more or less like an electronic opera going off somewhere close at hand. As Blaster and 'Bee had amply demonstrated, when you had two 'bots talking together, even something as simple as introducing oneself could sound like a minor key aria, and how they knew where one word stopped and another one started, Sam had no idea.

But they'd said they'd wanted to learn, so at the end of the day, Mikaela and Sam had dutifully gone home with their notes, such as they were, determined to return the next weekend to see what else Blaster might have to say.

And their instructor had gotten better, actually. After that first session, Blaster had done a little more thinking and research, and had drawn up a chart that showed English letters paired with their approximate Cybertronian glyph equivalents. The rest of the glyphs he had ended up associating with numbers or else with letters from other alphabets.

"But you can't _say _that," Mikaela had protested, staring at an example word with its alpha-numeric equivalents hovering beneath it in an unpronounceable consonant cluster.

"Of course you can. Don't think of it as your kind of phonics – think of every letter's or number's name as the 'sound' of the glyph," Blaster had instructed. "Since you're not really learning to speak, it doesn't matter what sound you associate with these, so long as there are no repeats. Trust me, this will be easier than trying to mess with your IPA to describe something I'm not even sure your auditory system can isolate enough to recognize."

That made a certain sense, though it had still taken them almost a month to memorize the whole series, excluding most of the ideograms. Fortunately, Blaster, despite his obvious eagerness, didn't seem to be the impatient sort. _Good thing, _Sam thought, as he tapped a pencil on his math homework and stared at the printout of the glyphs that he'd made and taped to the wall over his desk.

It wasn't until after their graduation that they even began working on learning words: they first learned how everyone wrote his given, Cybertronian name. Blaster had attempted to break those down into the ideas or components that had led to each 'bot's adoption of his English name. He'd also written out the translations of the translations of _their_ names, which the 'bots apparently used whenever they spoke among themselves.

"How come you don't just use 'Sam' and 'Mikaela'?" Sam had asked. "I don't even know what my name means – or I didn't. Not 'til now, anyway."

"All our names are descriptive in some fashion or another," Blaster had answered, and lifted his back-beams gently. "Why should we treat your names differently from our own when we speak our own language? Which, by the way, is called —" an indescribable set of sounds followed "after —" another indescribable set of sounds "—or 'Cybertronian' and 'Cybertron,' as 'Bee ended up christening them in English."

"And how do you spell those?" Mikaela had asked, and gotten a bright-eyed look and a set of glyphs on the holo-screen. Then Blaster had knelt down and held out a hand to them.

"Come on," he'd said, "let's take a walk!"

Once they'd gotten settled on his shoulders, Blaster had wandered around the base with them, spelling out the names of different objects on his holo-screen, along with the words for different body parts, the word for "wetware," all the Decepticons' names who had been at Mission City, "Mission City" itself, and "Tranquility," "home," "city," "sun," "song," "music," "sky," "earth," and "stars."

Of course, when Sam or Mikaela tried to repeat any of that, Blaster's fluid pronunciation became "Te-e-a-a-de-omicron-kappa-aleph-thirteen," but it worked out well enough.

Weeks passed. As their lessons progressed, Blaster had the help of the other 'bots, who were fascinated by the whole notion of "real-time language acquisition." They would wander over to listen or offer advice, and to rattle off lists of words pertaining to their own fields of specialization on request. (An endeavor fraught with a certain amount of hazard: one of Ratchet's contributions had led to his being banished for corrupting the youth. "She asked!" he'd protested, pointing at Mikaela; "And you answered," had been Blaster's response.)

And despite the fact that they technically were only learning to read, Blaster did end up demonstrating how everything would sound, if only they could say it. As Sam and Mikaela began learning to read short, simple sentences ("'Simple,'" Sam said, and made air quotes; "Do they really _need_ all this?" Mikaela asked, staring in bewilderment at the list of some sixteen case tenses), the comm officer especially made an effort to involve his fellows so that his pupils could test their skills listening to an actual, if rather artificially constructed, conversation.

Such tests required Blaster and his conversational partner_ du jour_ to craft short exchanges, while carefully restricting themselves to the word lists Mikaela and Sam were learning. And as they spoke, Blaster would project the words in written form onto his holo-screen, so that Sam and Mikaela could read off whatever it was that the two 'bots were saying more or less in real time. He even wrote in a program for his holo-screen that would highlight each glyph as it was spoken, which rather gave the whole exercise the feel of a_ Close Encounters of the Third Kind _sing-along.

But it worked well enough. It gave human beings, whose ability to discriminate spoken Cybertronian words was limited, a fighting chance at figuring out what was being said.

It also allowed for Sam's inadvertent discovery of the 'second mode' personal pronouns one day.

"Whoa, wait, wait, what's that?" he asked, staring at the screen at a word he didn't recognize. Blaster and Bumblebee, who'd been their instructors of the hour, paused and both of them glanced over at the screen.

"What is what?" Bumblebee asked.

"That." Sam stood up and pointed to the unknown word. Mikaela joined him, nodding.

"Yeah, we haven't had that one before. What is it?" She looked up at the two 'bots, who did not answer immediately.

"It's a pronoun," Blaster said, after a moment. "It means 'I.'"

"I thought 'e-l-theta' was 'I,'" Mikaela said, brow knitting.

"It is," Bumblebee confirmed. "This is just another way of saying 'I.'"

"What's the difference?" Mikaela asked, then frowned. "Whose line was that, anyway?"

"It was mine," Blaster admitted. "My mistake."

"So _what_'s the difference?" Sam repeated the question, looking from one 'bot to the other, then to Slidesign, even, for good measure. Slidesign just clicked softly, antennae pricked forward and fixed on the other two 'bots.

"Well, the one we've been using is 'I' for transports," the comm officer explained, slowly. "The one I just used is 'I' for structures. 'I' or 'we' or 'one' – any of those, really. You'll find the same distinction in every pronoun class that refers to Cybertronians."

"Oh." Sam scrunched his brow, thinking this revelation over. "But what if you're not in your alt-mode?" he asked after a minute, glancing from one 'bot to the other. "How would anybody else know what to use?"

As an answer, Blaster just gestured at Bumblebee, whose tires were clearly visible. "Your primary mode does undergo some adaptive modification when you trans-scan. But even if you haven't, your primary mode will reflect to a degree what your alt-mode is – jet engines are usually pretty obvious, as are treads or wheels or hover pods."

"Even if they aren't," Bumblebee added, fanning his sensor panels slightly, "you can usually tell – a structure just comes off differently than a transport."

"Huh." Sam paused, then, something tugging gently at his thoughts. "When you say, 'comes off differently'," he repeated, trying to puzzle it all out, "like, how?"

Before either 'bot could respond, however, Mikaela shook her head, as if to clear it or shake some thought into place. "Wait, just wait a second," she said, fixing Blaster with a puzzled look, eyes narrowed.

"What is it, Mikaela?" the comm 'bot said after moment. Mikaela held up a hand, gesturing to herself and Sam.

"Like, I _get_ how Sam and I could screw up, but how'd _you_ make that mistake?" she demanded. "I mean, it's not like _you_ don't know you're a structure, but you've been using the transport word for 'I' every other time. And if all the pronouns for Cybertronians have structure words and transport words, how come we haven't had any of the structure words yet?"

Which was a good question, Sam thought, wondering why he hadn't thought of it, and wondering, too, about the rather uncomfortable silence that seemed to be its answer. "Um, guys? What's the problem?" he prompted after a minute or two.

"Yeah, _guys,_" Mikaela said, stressing that last slightly, her tone suddenly sharp as she folded her arms across her chest; Slidesign actually hissed. "What's the problem?"

Still, the two Autobots did not respond, until finally, Blaster fanned his back-beams up, his generator giving a low, inquiring hum. 'Bee's panels twitched, but he just spread his hands. Blaster appeared to take that as a recommendation of some sort, for his vents cycled, then he spoke into a newly-opened comm channel: "Ratchet, this is Blaster. I need you on deck by the main hangar, sir. We've got a Protocol Two issue."

There was a pause on the other end of the line, then: "On my way."

The four of them waited in rather tense silence for Ratchet to arrive, which took all of two minutes. The medic slowed slightly as he approached, pausing at the edge of the group as he took stock of 'Bee and Blaster both stiff as swords, of a restless, uneasy Slidesign, of Mikaela's glare, and Sam's anxious confusion. Optical ridges canted upwards as he asked, after a few moments: "What's the issue?"

"Well, I don't know what yours is," Mikaela replied, rather acidly, lifting her eyes to meet the CMO's as she continued, "but I can't wait to hear why nobody wanted to tell us Blaster's a girl!"

* * *

There was a brief moment of silence after Mikaela's accusatory declaration, when the proverbial cricket could have been heard, then everyone seemed to start talking at once.

"Whoa, _what_?!"

"Situation report, Blaster – _now_."

"He's not – not really – "

"I didn't intend to break cover, sir, it was a slip – "

"Well, if _he_'s not, then _you_ are – "

"Are you kidding?"

"It's a complicated – "

" – just been out there too long, got a little careless – "

"_Ke!kt-!t-t-tkt-ssssssstchak!_"

"_Autobots!_" Ratchet spoke over them all. "Sam, Mikaela – please! Blaster, settle Slidesign, if you would." That, plus the glare, quieted everyone. The CMO looked from one to the other, as if assuring himself he had their attention, before he addressed himself once more to Blaster in a more normal tone: "I'll log the disclosure and discuss it with Prime upon his return. By way of mitigation, it might certainly have happened in worse company." Blaster, who had his hands full of agitated symbiont scorpion, merely flashed an affirmative, even as Mikaela said sharply:

"So it's a _disclosure_?"

Ratchet's vents flared briefly, but his tone was calm enough as he turned to look down at her. "Mikaela," he cautioned, "it's not quite what you imagine."

"So what is it, then?" she demanded, clearly still offended on behalf of her gender. "'Cause, I gotta say, I'm seeing a pretty big closet here."

"Um, Mikaela, maybe we – " Sam began, only to cut himself off mid-sentence in response to the glare his girlfriend leveled at him. Ratchet, fortunately, chose to take advantage of the silence to speak once more.

"If you wish to view it in those terms," the CMO said, "then you should understand that Blaster is not the only one 'in the closet.' We all are – it's protocol."

"Like Don't Ask, Don't Tell?" Mikaela retorted caustically, and Sam winced.

There was a long moment of silence, save for Blaster crooning softly at Slidesign, as 'bots stared into space, checking on-line for an explanation.

At length, Ratchet gave a two-toned hum. "I see," he said, glancing sideways at Bumblebee, who just flexed his panels slightly.

"Do you?" Mikaela asked archly. Ratchet's vents flared gently once more.

"I realize," he said steadily, leveling a stare back down at her, "that it may look as though Blaster is the only one to whom Protocol Two applies, but you need to understand: Blaster as a structure is no more female than any of the rest of us are male insofar as we're transports. I know," he said and held up a hand, forestalling the objection, "we all say 'he' of ourselves – that's what Protocol Two requires. In any foreign arena, especially one we've had no previous ties with, _if _the species is sexually differentiated, we adopt the gender that will be least problematic in terms of enabling us to move in the society."

"I guess that does kind of make sense," Sam mused, only to find himself once more the object of anger.

"Oh really?" his girlfriend demanded, folding her arms across her chest, eyes flashing.

"Well, doesn't it?"

"You tell me," came the sour reply. Sam held up his hands defensively.

"Look, I'm just saying I can see the point," he replied. "It's easier, that's all."

"Oh like you'd know!" Mikaela snapped. "It's not that bad, being a girl, okay?"

"Hey, I didn't mean – " Sam began, only to have Ratchet cut him off again.

"You two do realize that you are just reinforcing my opinion that we made the right choice in maintaining the gender regs portion of Protocol Two?" he demanded bluntly. In response, Mikaela drew herself up a bit, as she lifted her chin just a little higher.

"So all right, you've got regs. And it just so _happens_ that that means it's okay to talk about transports and not okay to talk about structures? What's the big secret?" she demanded, sweeping a hand towards the comm officer. "It's not like we didn't see Blaster transform!"

"It's not a secret," Blaster began, only to have Ratchet wave him silent, causing Mikaela once more to bridle and Slidesign to hiss softly. Blaster hastily quieted him, shooting a quick look in the CMO's direction, who ignored him, intent upon meeting Mikaela's objection.

"It would be better to say that it is not the fact of different alt-modes that is the secret, just as it's not a secret that you're sexually dimorphic. That isn't the problem," Ratchet said firmly.

"So what _is_ the problem?"

"The problem is how _you_ read those facts off," the medic replied. "We're _not _male or female. But if we have to pass as one or the other, with everything that that drags with it, in order to speak your language and fit into your world, then we'd rather not put ourselves – any of ourselves – at a disadvantage."

Mikaela's mouth tightened at that, but she wasn't ready to give up the argument yet. "That doesn't explain why Blaster can't say he's a structure!"

"He can say he's a structure, Bumblebee can say he's a transport – what neither of them can do is say it so that it appears to _mean_ something more than just a different alt-mode. All we've done is to suppress a distinction in our language that invites an unwarranted and unwanted comparison," Ratchet replied, before adding, somewhat severely: "In our experience, for every species there is some difference that matters, but translating one to the other is not a light undertaking: we would prefer that your troubles are not made ours."

"And what about your 'non-translation' playing right up to our problems?" Mikaela demanded. "How fair is that?"

Sam had the impression, then, of 'Bee and Blaster both tensing a bit, and if they'd had breaths to hold, they'd have been holding them. Slidesign emitted a low, anxious sounding hum. For his part, Ratchet stared at Mikaela a long moment, then his vents cycled a third time.

"I'm sorry, Mikaela," he said then in a much gentler tone, and seemed to mean it, though there was no hint of yielding in his voice, "but Protocol Two is not about justice. It's about survival, and we can't take that lightly." Ratchet paused, then nodded slightly at 'Bee and Blaster as he finished: "Take it, if you will, as a measure of their trust in you and in Sam, that they admitted the protocol breach instead of trying to cover it."

Mikaela followed his glance briefly, frowning and skeptical, but Sam could see her waver in that instant. "And what happens," she asked, voice taut, "when anybody else you _don't _trust figures out that you've got two –"

"Modalities," Bumblebee supplied quietly from the sidelines.

" – modalities?" she finished. "What then?"

"Then we do as our operational orders require – lie," Ratchet replied without hesitation.

Mikaela was clearly unhappy about this, wanting to argue, but apparently she recognized intransigence when confronted with it: nothing stood its ground like a twenty foot-tall robot who didn't want to be moved. Nevertheless, she met Ratchet's gaze, and stared and stared – and Sam could _feel _that silence dragging by like an injury – until finally:

"It really looks that bad to you?"she asked softly, and Sam, hearing the plea in the tone beneath the words, shifted a little, unaccountably feeling his face heat_. _The Autobot CMO, however, said nothing, just cocked his head at her, eliciting a sigh.

"Right," she said, and seemed to deflate. She paused, then: "I'm, um, I'm just going to be over there for awhile." Mikaela waved vaguely beyond the little group. She glanced around at them all, gaze halting last on Sam, who felt his blush deepen, and she seemed on the verge of saying something. But she apparently thought better of it. "'Scuse me," she muttered instead, and slipped off, heading towards the range.

'Bee gave a low rumble of concern, looking after her. "That really could have gone better," he said after a moment. Ratchet vented air once more.

"Yes, it could have. And it could have gone worse," he pointed out, before pinning Sam with a look. "Speaking of which…" Before he could continue, though, Sam held up a restraining hand.

"I won't say anything – I don't get it, entirely, but okay. It's your call," he said, in a rather subdued tone, and wondered why _he _felt tired suddenly.

"Thank you," Ratchet replied, then looked over at 'Bee, Blaster, and Slidesign. "I've got an incident report to log – call me if necessary."

So saying, the CMO turned and headed back toward Hangar D, leaving behind two uncomfortable 'bots, an unhappy symbiont, and one confused boy. Sam shook his head, blew out a sigh that turned into a low whistle.

"Weirdest argument ever," he declared, with feeling. Then, sensing several tons of metal cringe in tandem at his words, he grunted and looked up at his guardian and at Blaster, and gave them a slight smile. "Relax, guys, I'm not going to go all Jerry Falwell on you about... whatever it is you're about, if you're about anything gender-ish," he finished, somewhat lamely.

Blaster appeared to be looking that reference up, but 'Bee apparently got it, for his panels did ease forward a bit. But he did cock his head at Sam, and ask, "You would characterize what just happened as 'going Jerry Falwell'?" And as he spoke, one panel flicked backwards, along the path Mikaela had taken.

"What, with Mikaela? Well, no, not that part. I just meant – " But here, Sam paused, hesitating over the sudden sting of a new guilt that burgeoning awareness had given birth to. And after a moment he snorted softly. "I was going to say," he said slowly, "that you don't have to worry about me trying to cram you into some box you don't want – making you live up to something you're not. But that's kind of your point, isn't it? That we've all been doing it already, just we put you in the cave, not the well."

"The cave?" 'Bee repeated, as he and Blaster exchanged a confused look.

"John Gray. Worst board game ever. Never mind." Sam sighed, looking unhappily after Mikaela.

Getting caught in the middle of an alien war, he thought, had changed a lot for both of them. And there were times when he admitted, if just to himself, that without that, they probably would've been finished before there'd ever been anything truly begun. Mikaela would have been polite, but she wouldn't have seen much more than the awkward, if persistent, outsider trying to worm his way into her good graces... and other things. As for Sam... well, he wouldn't have come to realize just how much lay beneath the surface.

And he wouldn't even have cared, whispered that newborn guilt, because he wouldn't even have been looking for it, now would he?

"I don't know how to fix this," he said, and realized he'd said it aloud only when 'Bee replied:

"No one's asking you to."

"Yeah. I mean, no – I... both." Bumblebee and Blaster regarded him blankly for a moment, but then 'Bee gave a soft noise, as of understanding.

"You'll think of a way. We all will," he assured him.

"Hope so," Sam replied. _Boy, do I hope so!_

* * *

TBC...


	3. Engendering Difference

**Engendering Difference**

Mikaela, meanwhile, felt rotten. Rotten, and embarrassed, and between those two things, she felt confused as well. She felt embarrassed by her outburst, which had come out of nowhere – _she _certainly hadn't seen it coming. It was just... everything had clicked, while Blaster had been talking, and she hadn't liked what she'd seen and something had just boiled over.

That had passed, but now here she was, hiding out by the bend in the road, where it began curving its way down towards the city, hoping none of her friends found her and feeling like a complete and utter wimp just because of that. _This is so completely stupid, _she told herself, but that didn't seem to have any effect so far as her legs were concerned.

So she sat there instead and tried to figure out why she'd gone off like she had, and that was where she got confused. Because it wasn't as if anything Ratchet had said about humanity was so new to her – how could it be? But most days, that wasn't enough to bring her claws out – it took idiots like Trent (or worse, Simmons) patronizing her to her face, usually, to do that.

Yet she'd jumped down Sam's throat, and all he'd said was that he could see why the 'bots might want to sidestep humanity's gender relations, even if it meant stepping right into being seen as men. Unlike just about every other smug high school boy she'd ever hung out with, he hadn't just taken for granted that anyone in their right mind should want to be a guy: he'd actually seen the problem the 'bots were having, which meant he'd seen the problem humanity was having. So where was the sense?

She was still puzzling over that when she heard the distinctive sound of a three-ton Autobot trying to be stealthy in robot mode. With a sigh, she called over her shoulder, "You're really not very good at that, you know."

"It's funny, but they never tapped me for reconnaissance whenever I put my name in," Blaster's voice came back.

"Yeah, funny," Mikaela said, and snorted.

"So does this still count as a bad time?" Blaster asked after a few moments' silence. Mikaela closed her eyes, counted to three.

"Is it going to matter if I say 'yes'?" she asked.

"I don't know," the Autobot replied. "What follows if it does?"

Mikaela sighed. "You're not leaving, are you?" she asked, without much hope. There was a low hum, and then a strange, hissing noise, before suddenly, the ground nearby began to fall inward toward a pair of pincers and head. Slidesign crawled forward, blowing dust through his turbine generator and shaking himself. Mikaela coughed a bit, and the symbiont's antennae popped up and swiveled toward her.

"Uh, hey," she managed, startled. Slidesign chirped, his antennae fixing on her a moment, then suddenly, he slithered around behind her, curling about her, and she felt a low, gentle vibration thrum through him as he settled there at her back. She blinked. _He's... purring? _"Blaster?" she called, uncertainly.

"Kemtex model symbionts were never built to handle speech, other than basic commands," the comm officer said. Mikaela glanced up, puzzled by the apparent non-sequitur and was in time to see him come to a halt just above her on the slope. The Autobot sank down onto his haunches and gestured to Slidesign. "It was a pretty controversial decision, but at the time, it was the only way anyone knew of to prevent a fatal case of schizophrenia between the carrier and the symbiont. They were given a lot of empathetic programming instead – hope you don't mind."

"You're saying he's trying to make me feel better?"

Blaster nodded. "He's pretty good with 'bots – seems to be pretty good at reading your species, too. Or at least, you and Sam." So saying, he fell silent, and she could hear servos whine a bit as he settled just a little further.

For some minutes, neither of them spoke, and Mikaela found herself looking at him sidelong, from underneath her lashes. Crouching there, with his back-beams spread for balance and his head down, intricate internal parts gleamed through the gaps that opened in armor, as plates flexed to let him bend. And then there was all the support structure – her eyes wandered over hinging, hydraulics, high tension cabling and struts – all of it made to hold his weight, keep him in place. Too bad no one seemed to know where to put him...

"What _are_ you?" she asked abruptly.

Slidesign whined softly, as Blaster said, "Cybertronian."

"No, really," Mikaela pressed, "what are you?"

"Cybertronian – not female, not male, not –" eyes flashed sapphire "– human."

"I got that." She tilted her head back, eying him top to toe. "Why don't you want to talk about it?"

"Because with Protocol Two, I don't see how this can end well," Blaster replied. "Mikaela – "

"You're a structure," she stated, cutting him off. He vented.

"Yes, I am," he answered.

"What's that mean? Is it... is it like AIDS or something?" she asked, only half randomly. "What's the big deal?"

This time, Blaster's undertones hummed with a definite offense. "It isn't a pathology," he replied, sharply. "Ratchet explained it."

"Yeah, Ratchet said it was about survival, but let's be serious," Mikaela retorted and gestured at him. "What are the odds that some chauvinist jerk is going to be able to do anything to you even _if _he thinks you're female? And I highly doubt they'll ever see it that way – I mean, look at you! You're, like, the farthest thing from female."

"And you move around in a bipedal form and work in that mode. Naturally, no one's going to believe you have anything structural about you."

As retorts went, it hit sideways. Her response, then, was only sensible. "What?"

"You can't change forms," Blaster replied in all too reasonable a tone, "and you can't hide easily in another society, granted, but you're in no way specialized for a function that involves your internals in a socially desired productive capacity..." He trailed off and eyed her significantly. "Or are you?"

Mikaela stared up at him, eyes narrowing as she reran that through her mind. "Are we – are _you_ talking about having babies?" she asked finally.

"It's what you do, isn't it?"

"Oh, I'm totally popping them out," she snapped. "Can't you tell? I'm pregnant right now!"

"I wouldn't know, but it's what you do," Blaster insisted, clarifying: "Females of your species – that's how you're made to function."

"Along with a _lot_ of other ways of 'functioning,' thanks!"

Blaster flicked his back-beams. "Look, all I'm saying is: you may not think that anyone could mistake you for a structure, but that's not guaranteed."

"No." Mikaela shook her head, not even tempted to belief. "There's no way!"

"It makes as much sense as you seeing me as a man," Blaster countered, eyes brightening, as he continued, wryly: "Actually, from my perspective, it makes a great deal more sense than you seeing me or any of us as men."

At that, she gave him a rather flat look. "Right. Cute gimmick," she accused.

"It's not a gimmick."

"You really expect me to believe I look like a structure to you?" Mikaela demanded.

"No, most days, you seem like a transport to me. It's just sometimes that you strike me otherwise – or when I think about it. Then you seem like a structure. It's a galactic constant, Mikaela," he said quickly, before she could object. "Everybody understands everyone else on the basis of the difference that structures one's own species. That's why Protocol Two works, because when you open your eyes, you don't think, you just see sexuation whereas we – well, 'see' isn't as much our metaphor, but it'll do – we see modality. Doesn't matter what we're looking at, that's how we see it, and generally speaking, none of us is very sensitive to where others draw a line: so where you see a difference between your sexes, we don't – you all still seem like transports most days. Likewise you see us all as men, and if you hadn't stumbled over my mistake, you wouldn't have realized there might be reason to consider me – or the others – otherwise."

Admittedly, in light of that, it sounded less like a gimmick. Still: "I'm nothing like you," she protested.

"You are very different – which is in part how we got here," he pointed out. Mikaela, however, was not about to let the matter go so easily.

"And you're nothing like us," she continued, pressing the point. "So what's your problem? Who's going to be able to do anything to you, no matter what sex we see you as, other than the army?"

"The army isn't anything to take lightly."

"Yeah, but they won't be coming after you because someone thought you were a girl!" she retorted.

Blaster tipped his head slightly at her, seeming to consider this point. "Why not?" he asked finally.

Taken aback, Mikaela blinked, then frowned. "What do you mean, 'why not'?"

"Just that: why would they not? We've read the news - your species' armed forces are no havens of equality and fairness here or anywhere on this planet. So why wouldn't they?"

To which, Mikaela could but gesture helplessly at Blaster. "Because," she replied, and narrowed her eyes when Blaster glanced down at himself, then over at her, then back at himself, as if attempting to ascertain at what, particularly, she was looking. "Are you being deliberately dense?" she demanded.

"You were pointing..."

"Blaster, you're thirty feet tall!" she burst out. "You're a thousand times heavier than I am. You have machine guns built into you! Even if you could have babies, I really doubt you'd have any problems with the cops, the army, the politicians, or the creep on the corner."

The comm officer gave an odd sounding little rumble at that. "So... it _is_ having babies that makes the difference, then?"

"No! It's not about that, it's about hel– " She was brought up short by the word in her mouth, which she swallowed disgustedly. "No," she repeated, in a more subdued tone. Blaster hummed softly, but did not press her.

"I'm not as well-traveled as 'Bee," he said after a little while. "But since I got out into the field, I've probably learned to speak upwards of... say, thirty different planetary languages," he mused, and gave a little tonal shrug. "Thirty times, being one sex or the other, or even a third – and I couldn't have faked it if I'd had to. Just couldn't see what made you go one way or another with us. Never met anyone else who could have either, save _maybe _Jazz. Still don't think even he could've made you believe it if you didn't already see him as a her or vice versa."

"For someone who can't see the difference between sexes," Mikaela retorted, "you seem to know pretty well what you don't want to be."

"Thanks to you," Blaster replied. "You talk about your problems enough. We have your statistics ten times over."

Mikaela lowered her eyes then. Behind her, Slidesign whined softly, as if in sympathy or concern. "All right," she said at length. "Fine. So you know about us, thanks to us. But what about you?" She raised her eyes once more to fix upon the comm officer. "Why are we transports to you?"

"I could give you reasons, but – " he gave a tonal flare, like an auditory grimace " – it's hard enough to say for ourselves why a transport feels different from a structure at the end of the day, or why you come off as more transport than structure."

Mikaela eyed him a long moment. "You know what I think?" she asked, balancing her elbows on her knees, hands folded together.

"What?"

"I think you're so on to the whole 'she'-'he' division in English and other languages because it's something you know. Ratchet said you suppressed something in your language that might invite a comparison," she told him, "but I think probably the first comparison you made told you that we fit _your_ pattern, and that's why you don't advertise – because something happened between you, and structures didn't come out on top. That's why we're transports to you, not structures."

It was, at least in part, a shot in the dark. She really had no reason to suspect, except that explanations or no, she just couldn't believe that alien robots who weighed in the tons made a policy about _grammar _to hide their differences from weaker species – not unless they had reason to fear already. _And what do Cybertronians have to be afraid of, except other Cybertronians?_ she reasoned.

Blaster said nothing, but behind her, Slidesign gave an odd _tch-tch-tch-tch_, shifting his legs, all the joints flexing in a way that reminded her of nothing so much as a black widow's articulated limbs. It made her flesh crawl. In response, Blaster clicked gently at him, and the symbiont settled once more.

"You underestimate non-Cybertronian species, which you shouldn't," he admonished. "But I won't say you're wrong – not after the war."

"So it's a post-war rule?"

"You misunderstand: it's more complicated than that," the comm officer warned. "Protocol Two has been with us almost as long as we've been in contact with other species, and it's in place because we've had some... unhappy... experiences with sexed species. Sexed identification is only one dimension of the problems we've encountered, but it's a consistent issue, and one that admits of a legal and linguistic solution. If we can't grasp why you perceive us one way or another, we can at least try to protect ourselves from its worst consequences.

"The war came later than all of that, but – " Blaster shook his head, back-beams dipping " – there isn't one aspect of our lives that it hasn't changed, including adherence to Protocol Two. Once the war grew beyond a simple rebellion, it was obvious that we needed to keep structures from being singled out in any way by alien species – we needed to make certain they weren't especially targeted because their mode was assigned to some less desired sexed position than that to which transports were assigned."

"Because someone had problems with structures during the war?" Mikaela demanded, suspicious.

Blaster gave an odd, negative little harmonic chuff. "You fought at Mission City," he said, instead, unhappily. "I suppose you noticed what happened to the structures on site?"

Images of massive destruction loomed large in her mind's eye at the very mention, and she stared then at Blaster as the realization hit. "You mean...?"

"Most of us died with our cities or our ships," he confirmed, and Slidesign whined softly at him. "We were never made to leave them."

"But you're here," she protested. "You can – you _did_."

"Yes – and no. Blaster survived and he did leave Nova Cronum – even left Cybertron, like just about everyone. But I haven't always been Blaster."

Mikaela thought about this for some minutes. "Are you... are you, like, amnesiac?" she asked finally.

"Sometimes I wish, but no – I'm a structure. I was made to be a part of someone, with my cohort brothers – we were made to _be_ Vox, the comm cluster for Nova Cronum. We were made to be one – him."

"How," she asked, confused, "can you be part of somebody and that somebody at the same time?"

"Because that is how we were. And now we're otherwise – now, I'm Blaster."

As answers went, that was completely unhelpful. "What _are _you?" she asked, this time in all perplexity. Blaster laughed a little – sadly, she thought.

"I don't know," he answered, honestly. "I don't fit into your world. I don't even – " and here, his tone grew wry, but there wasn't a drop of humor in it " – fit into my own anymore."

"Try," she urged nevertheless.

But Blaster shook his head. "I _can't, _Mikaela."

She gave him a skeptical look. "You can't try?"

At that, he simply hummed softly, back-beams fluttering agitatedly in a silence that stretched so long that Mikaela was on the verge of telling him to forget it when suddenly he spoke again.

"We used to think each other's thoughts," he said, and there was an undercurrent in his voice that set her on edge like nails on the chalkboard. "Before the war, we spent most of our days synced up to each other in alt-mode, processing comm flow. We're not true telepaths – we look, we don't see; we see, we don't look. We saw – we heard. We were our labor and each other's lives. We were Vox. We were one – with each other, with our work, perfectly."

Blaster fell silent, and Slidesign chirruped, then crooned, a low, anxious noise. Without warning, his tail snaked out, lightning quick, to coil snugly about his partner's wrist. Mikaela started, but Blaster just gave a soft hum, running his fingers over the 'vertebral' joints, and along the flats of those bladed prongs, and then, unexpectedly, his hand and forearm shifted forms. Mikaela blinked, as the two seemed to fuse, Blaster and Slidesign seeming somehow to lock about each other, like braiding metal. The symbiont whined up at his carrier – as if encouraging him, she thought.

Perhaps he was. Perhaps it worked, too, for Blaster resumed then: "You can't lose that without losing yourself. And what you're left with is... just yourself. And you feel how small that is, and how narrow – and how heavy." His undertones gave a shivery little flare that sounded like pain. "Some structures," he said carefully, "they just... laid that weight down. Went up with their ground and out like lights. Of the ones who didn't – " back-beams flittered uneasily " – every one of us lost his mind when he lost his gestalt."

Blaster halted once more, and Slidesign, sensing his partner's distress, crooned. For her part, Mikaela found herself suddenly and oppressively aware of all the little shifts in Blaster's armature, and their clicks and whirring. They made her twitch in response to the overwhelming sense of _unquiet_.

"Some of us," the comm officer said at length, "a very few – came back from that, at least a little. But we came back someone else – we came back something else. We didn't think the same. We didn't feel the same. We didn't really know who we were – we couldn't even _remember_ the same way anymore. Some outgraded to transports, to try to make a clean break, to make it bearable – to get some sense back in their lives. Transport shells make some sense, after all – in a war, you'll always have to move at some point, and the quicker, the better."

"How come you didn't?" Mikaela ventured to ask. "Become a transport, I mean."

"Because it doesn't really help. If it did, you wouldn't have so many outgraded structures killing themselves," he said, with an unpleasant little trill. "Outgrading just takes the edge off, but that damage is still there. It's always there – down in you, like a break that doesn't ever close." He lifted his back-beams, let them fall. "You can run from it to another shell if you like, but running from it isn't very structural, and I'd rather not contribute to the complete annihilation of the mode I was made to be."

Mikaela sat there for a few minutes, trying to wrap her head around the life he had described, and its apparent end in Cybertron's warring.

"Why can't you just... I mean, since there _are _other structures out there, couldn't you sort of...?" She gestured vaguely as she trailed off, but Blaster gave a negative flare of tones, and shook his head.

"We don't work that way," he said. "Having other structures around, outgraded or not, it – it can help you through the days that leave you wanting to die. But just having a group of structures in one place doesn't let us be what we are, or what we were – what we're supposed to be. We have to fit together – we have to work together, and you can't just take a jumble of us from different tasks, different cohorts, and throw us together like that. We don't fit with each other, so we can't merge into a gestalt. If we can't merge, we can't work like we're supposed to. We're just…" Another tonal grimace, as Blaster finished bleakly: "We're broken."

"But they could fix you, right?" Mikaela said, after a moment. "Ratchet or somebody could – "

"No." The denial was short, succinct, and horribly certain, and she winced in response, but Blaster gave a quick, sharp shake of his head. "Don't," he said, flatly, and when she gave him a surprised look, gave urgent explanation: "I've already done a lot of grieving for that, and for the others who don't have the luxury of it – probably have a lot still to come, but that's for me to do. Besides," he said firmly, as back-beams lifted in what seemed a determined fashion, "I've been lucky."

"Lucky?" she repeated, unable to suppress consternation.

"Very," he answered, as he reformed the hand and arm that had seemingly merged with Slidesign's tail, and began extricating himself from his symbiont's grip. "We may all be more transportational these days, but I'm still a structure, despite it all. I've got Slider and a place here now. And two of my brothers are still out there, in fact, even if they are transports now – they're two of the 'bots in my squad, heading for Earth. Not many structures still have brothers from their original cohort." He gave her a rather darkly amused look. "War being what it is, if you survive the first attack, there's always some new and interesting opportunity to get killed. We've beat the odds so far."

Mikaela looked uncomfortably away at that, not much liking that reminder. Barricade was still out there, she thought, and Starscream, and who knew how many others of Megatron's followers? Followers who might not be so willing to give up the fight, or think twice of bringing it to Earth. Blaster, sensing her mood and its origin, gave a soft rumble.

"Welcome to our world," he said, not without sympathy, and Slidesign chittered quietly. She grimaced.

"Some world! And you still think our_ gender_ relations look bad," she couldn't quite refrain from saying.

"We're not the only ones to think so," he pointed out. Mikaela closed her eyes a moment.

But it wasn't as if there were any denying that, after all – certainly she couldn't deny it. So with a glum nod, she conceded: "Yeah, I know." A pause, then: "I still think your gender regs suck."

Blaster hummed softly. "I won't argue with you."

For a long while, neither of them spoke, just sat there, watching the shadows lengthen as out over the ocean, the sun sank slowly.

"It's funny," she mused, after a time and more calmly, as she idly traced infinities on Slidesign's casing, "I always did kind of assume you were all 'it', except you can't really say that in English to somebody. So I thought 'he' had to be just what 'Bee picked up on first, and then everybody used it. I didn't think there was any kind of... how'd Ratchet say it?" Mikaela frowned, momentarily at a loss.

"'Difference that matters'?" Blaster supplied.

"Yeah, that. I thought you were all just the same – which is weird in its own way!" she admitted. "But then Sam caught that word, and you said it was a _mistake_ and started explaining, and everything just..." She gestured vaguely skywards. "It felt too much like... us. And I guess," Mikaela sighed, just a little wistfully, "I'd kind of gotten used to thinking that at least somebody didn't have to deal with our mess_._ I liked thinking that. Although," she added quickly, glancing up at him once more, "I did mean it when I said it's not that bad being a girl. I mean, I wouldn't want to be a guy."

"Fair enough. I never wanted to outgrade to a transport," Blaster replied, wryly. He cocked his head at her, and his eyes brightened a bit then. "You know, I think I owe you one."

"For what?" Mikaela asked, confused.

"For defending my disclosure against what seemed to you to be an unjust and oppressive policy. For 'defending my honor,' as I believe would be the appropriate saying, had our situations been reversed," he answered. At that, Mikaela felt her face heat.

"Some defense," she muttered. "You didn't even need it."

"You didn't know that," Blaster countered. "And you weren't wholly mistaken." At her surprised look, he hummed softly, and said: "If someone had undertaken to destroy structures out of some twisted bigotry, he could hardly have improved on what we did to ourselves in all equality. Structures were never more than thirty percent of all Cybertronians, even at our height. Thanks to the war, I'd guess we're no more than five percent of survivors – that's a loss of roughly _ninety _percent of our numbers."

The trouble with Cybertronians, Mikaela decided, as she shook her head sharply to try to clear it, was numerical. There were so many numbers to attach to them – number of feet tall, number of years old, number of miles crossed, number of years spent at war, and so on and so forth – and the one thing all such measures had in common was that they were mind-blowingly excessive. This one was no different: try though she might, she couldn't imagine losing ninety percent of all women. She couldn't even imagine very well losing ninety percent of her high school class. Who would be left? _Probably Trent, _she thought, disgusted.

"I'm sorry," she said, which was pitifully inadequate, but what else did one say to something like that?

"So are we." There was a brief silence, then: "I know your gender relations are poor, but some days," he said, bloody irony the sharp edge to each word, "despite holding on claws and clamps for millennia to being a structure, I swear I'd trade modality for sexuation." Slidesign gave an odd, skittery whine, and Blaster, with a little huff of air, gently ran his fingers along his symbiont's back. "Maybe if we'd had that, if we could make a future for ourselves between just two of us, like you and Sam – maybe the war wouldn't have been so damned relentless!"

Mikaela rubbed at her brow, chewing gently on her lip as she glanced back towards the base, thinking with sudden longing of Sam. Of Sam, who probably was still trying to figure out what had hit him, to say nothing of her, earlier that afternoon, but who at least was flesh and blood and familiar in all his difference. _And funny, and friendly, and... _she thought, and let that thought run out. Not because there wasn't more – there was a _lot _more in that 'and' – but some words were better left unsaid, even unthought, until they were truly needed. Sitcoms wore them out for people long before they ever needed them, and left them to be the misers.

But that was all right, she thought. Words mattered less than the reality.

An electronic hum drew her gaze back from the horizon to a more metallic reality, even as Blaster asked, "You okay?"

"Hm? Yeah, I was just thinking," she said, flushing a little, though she smiled, too, as she lowered her eyes a moment. For of a sudden, she was struck by a thought – one so obvious, she was only surprised it'd been absent so long: _If they don't 'see' difference between sexes, does that mean they don't 'see' love and sex like we do? Is it all just a future to them? Just more of us? _She supposed they must see something more, Blaster's explanation notwithstanding. After all, no one seemed to be expecting her and Sam to reproduce any time soon, despite, as Ratchet had so bluntly and clinically put it, Sam wanting to mate with her. And bad as Marvin Gaye was, there were worse songs to pick when one was an undercover agent clumsily trying to arrange for said 'mating' – it could've been _The Bad Touch, _after all_._..

But "something" wasn't necessarily much: 'Bee_ had_ been clumsy about it, and Ratchet had been clinical – maybe they really did have a hard time with recognizing and dealing with that kind of feeling. And if they really didn't see what was so evident to human beings... _Was_ there any such thing as romantic love among robots? Was there attraction across their modes? And if there were, would _she _'see' it, since she couldn't 'see' modality? Or maybe modality would have nothing to do with it, if it existed – who knew?

She supposed she could ask. Instead, after a long moment, she looked up at Blaster and said, quietly: "Thanks. For telling me all that."

"I'd say 'no problem,' but I somehow feel that's abusing semantics a little much."

She chuckled at that. "No kidding!"

"Well, that's good to hear," Blaster said, apparently referring to her laugh. But then he sobered. "Can I offer you an apology?" he asked. "For Protocol Two – for all of us?"

Mikaela ran her fingers through her hair, habitually twisting a strand of it about her fingers as she considered this request. "I – mm. That's awkward." To the puzzled rumble, she explained: "Look, after what you've said – I _get _it, now, why you're all so... cagey. Even if I don't think you need to be."

Blaster flicked his back-beams. "We'll take that into consideration."

She gave him a long look at that. "Sure you will. Seriously, Blaster – Protocol Two isn't going anywhere, is it?" It wasn't really a question, and Blaster had the grace not to treat it as such.

"It will take some time," the comm officer admitted. "A long time, by your measures."

"That's what makes the apology awkward." Mikaela sighed. "Look, can we just call it even? Since in the end, we're not changing soon, either...?"

Blaster flared his vents at that, but he also laughed quietly. "Two wrongs cancel – under the circumstances, that is... a generous mathematics," he concluded.

"It sucks," she corrected him. Her only answer was a low rumble – agreement, perhaps, even as Slidesign emitted an emphatic string of clicks, as if hopeful, and hummed, vibrating hard. On impulse, Mikaela scratched gently at his armor, and got a curious-sounding trill. Antennae swiveled, as if to get a better 'look' at her; she gave him a lopsided smile.

"Thanks, Slidesign," she told him, and this time got a definite and cheerful chirp in response.

"Think it might be time to head back?" Blaster tactfully asked.

"Probably so," she said, and rose to her feet, brushing at the dust clinging to the seat of her pants. Slidesign, meanwhile, got his legs under himself, and snaked about her before skittering over to Blaster to pull himself up onto his usual observation perch, clinging to his partner's back. The comm officer clicked softly at him, then held out his hand to Mikaela.

"Thanks," she said again, as she settled into the palm of his hand, letting him lift her into place on the shoulder Slidesign wasn't using. From across the way, the symbiont chittered at her, as if in greeting, and she smiled again at him, though she said nothing as Blaster stood and began walking back towards the cluster of hangars in the distance.

They'd come perhaps halfway in silence when Blaster finally spoke. "You're sure you're all right?" he asked.

"Hm?" Mikaela blinked and shook herself slightly. "Yeah, fine. Why?"

"Because you're pretty quiet. Plus, Slider's getting what I'd call 'pensive' off you. Something still on your mind?"

Mikaela, who was staring at the small figure standing next to Bumblebee on the tarmac's edge, considered a moment before answering: "You know how you said sometimes you wish you could trade modality for sexuation?" And when Blaster's tones flared in an affirmative: "That future isn't always in the bag even so – and it's not all about kids."

"Ah." She gave him a quick look at that, for she thought he seemed ever so slightly amused, but then turned her attention back to the boy and the 'bot who stood waiting for them.

The moment Blaster was within polite range – for a Cybertronian – of 'Bee, Sam was moving, so that when Blaster crouched to let her down from his shoulder, he was already nearly upon the comm officer. Mikaela, who'd slid off his hand while still some five feet in the air, rocked back on her heels a bit as Sam came to a somewhat abrupt halt before her.

For a moment that felt like the longest the world had ever known, time upended, and it was as if nothing had happened since the day she had accepted a ride home from the awkward and obviously smitten boy in his beat-up car.

Then: "So," Sam said and coughed, managing to look somehow guilty and hopeful at the same time. Which was why, perhaps, she found herself blurting out, before he could launch into whatever speech was clearly coming:

"I'm not mad at you, Sam."

"I – you're not?" Sam blinked, expressions shifting to one of almost comic relief when she shook her head. "Seriously?"

Mikaela gave him a close-mouthed smile, shook her head once more. And then, just because Sam still seemed uncertain, and because there were sometimes better ways to say a thing than with words, she stepped forward, laid her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him. It was not the melting sort of invitation that some kisses were, but she took her time – long enough for Sam to kiss back – before she broke it off.

He gave her a dazed half-smile. "Wow," he managed, and so help her, she couldn't quite prevent a giggle. That made him laugh, too, a little self-consciously at first, but then less so as he shook himself, and slipped an arm around her waist.

An electronic rumble drew their eyes upward. The two 'bots, who had retreated one of their own long strides to talk together in muted Cybertronian, had given up the pretense of disinterest and were watching them both now.

"Is that the future with or without children?" Blaster leaned closer in to address his better-traveled colleague.

"I'd say it's a definite... I'm not sure," 'Bee replied, with a flick of his panels.

Sam looked from one 'bot to the other, disbelief warring with suspicion. "That's irony, right, guys? A little irony right there, to break the tension?" he ventured. His girlfriend rolled her eyes.

"Probably not. Later, Sam," she said, then, to his expectant look, and smiled sweetly as she glanced over at the 'bots to add: "But _not _in the car. We'll find someplace else."

'Bee's panels drooped disappointedly at that, though his eyes brightened noticeably. "I've been feeling the need to practice eavesdropping," he quipped. Casting an eye at the western horizon, alight with sunset orange, he asked, "You want me to take you home now?"

"We can call your grandma, tell her we're going out to dinner so she won't start calling my parents' place," Sam suggested, addressing himself to the privacy problem.

"Sounds good," Mikaela agreed. 'Bee hummed, then stepped away from Blaster and folded down into his Camaro form, opening his doors for the two of them. Sam, phone to ear, was waiting on Grandma Lori to pick up the phone; he absently slid into the driver's side seat. Mikaela was about to do the same on the passenger's side, when a thought struck her and she paused, hovering in 'Bee's door-frame a moment before she turned back towards Blaster.

"Hey," she called up to him, just a little diffidently. The comm officer canted an optical ridge, back-beams lifting slightly in question. "Earlier, you said you'd been female to some species before, right?"

"To several of them, yes," he answered. "Why?"

"I'm wanting to ask you something," she said, "and I'm really not trying to be, like, offensive about you and having sexes..."

"Ask," Blaster replied.

"It's kind of silly, but..." She took a deep breath and blurted it out before she could stop herself: "Since you're not really one or the other, would it bother you if I thought of you as a girl? Not in public," she added hastily, "just for myself."

Blaster laughed – a rumbling laugh that shook his frame and sent a glitter of sunlight flashing off his armor, but as he sank down to squat across from her, the eyes that fixed on her were alight with something other than amusement.

"If _you_ like, not at all," she answered. To which, Mikaela smiled brilliantly.

"Thank you," she replied, and got an odd, emphatic chirrup from Slidesign, who swayed slightly on Blaster's shoulder, as if to affirm his – or her, Mikaela supposed now – approval. She gave _her_ a nod, then waved good-bye to them both before she quickly ducked her head and settled into her seat, letting 'Bee shut his door behind her.

"So," she inquired of her boyfriend, who was staring at her, "dinner?"

"Dinner," he confirmed. Then, a little more timorously, "'Bee, you cool with that?"

"Of course," came the response, as the Autobot pulled away from the tarmac and snaked back towards the road. "And don't worry," he added, "I was kidding about eavesdropping."

At that, Mikaela hung her head, staring down at her hands as she worried at one of the rings she wore. "It's not that we don't trust you," she temporized. "It's – "

"It's just that we _did_ deceive you, so logically... " 'Bee let the conclusion supply itself. "I'll be at the curb."

"Okay," Sam said, nodding, before he glanced sideways at Mikaela. "Thanks, 'Bee."

"No need." Their ride chose that moment to tune in to the local airwaves, and, with Venus ascendant and the dark coming on, he flicked his lights on and paced the white lines down the road. Sam sang tunelessly under his breath on and off; Mikaela said nothing, just watched the glare of the city play off 'Bee's windshield.

Eventually, they pulled into the lot at the local diner that the two teens favored. They disentangled themselves from seat-belts and cracked the doors open; Mikaela grabbed her purse from the floor. They had hardly set foot on the pavement, however, when 'Bee called quietly to them:

"Sam, Mikaela." And when they paused in his door frames: "I'll be online with Ratchet, and maybe also Prime."

Which was unnecessary reassurance at this point; Sam cleared his throat awkwardly, and looked at Mikaela. "Um, listen, 'Bee," she began, striving to sound anything but uncomfortable. Her effort must not have been terribly convincing, for 'Bee continued, by way of explanation:

"Because now that Prime's off shift and away from the bureaucrats, he's going to be getting Ratchet's report, and he'll want a word, I'm sure."

"Oh. Okay." Mikaela nodded, though she found herself confused: why was he mentioning this? "Then we'll, um, let you get on with that." She looked at Sam, who was quick on the pick-up, though his brow, too, was furrowed in puzzlement.

"Yeah, we'll see you in an hour – or whenever you're done. Just, you know." Sam held up his phone by way of illustration, and then, at a loss for more, stuck it back into his pocket and made as if to depart.

"I will. But should you have any questions yourselves in the meantime..." their Autobot friend hastened to finish, and just a little too earnestly to be off-handed about it.

It was probably – no, it was _undoubtedly_ a mistake to think of Bumblebee as "cute" or "innocent," though after a year's acquaintance, it was a surprisingly easy error to make at times. As now – with 'Bee's object finally in plain view, Mikaela glanced at Sam, whose mouth seemed caught between a pucker and a smile and who was, in any case, deferring to her still. She leaned meditatively on 'Bee's door, feeling the give in the hinge and the little recoil as 'Bee unobtrusively 'leaned' back, and after a moment, she nodded.

"We'll call," she assured him.

"I'll be at the curb," he repeated, which felt suddenly far less distant.

So saying, he fell silent, in an instant becoming no more than an outdated Camaro, which left Sam and Mikaela gazing at each other over his roof. Sam lifted a brow.

"Shall we?" he asked, sweeping an arm towards the diner. Mikaela shut her door, and came to join him, lacing her fingers with his. Shoulder brushing shoulder, boyfriend and girlfriend crossed the lot in silence.

'Bee traced their passage on IR sensors, following the little bloom of heat in their wake 'til it and they were lost against the radiance of the diner's glow – dark lights against that brightness that eventually disappeared in it.

So they were 'out,' as the local idiom would have it, even if only to a pair of teenagers, he thought, and fell to musing on the fact. It felt odd, after so many missions and millennia, to think that there were alien others who knew what he was – knew _fully _what he was, or as fully as they could grasp at this point. It felt – exposed, even though it was Sam and Mikaela, who were in a separate category from the rest of humanity so far as he and the others were concerned. For they were disinterested – they had no stake other than friendship and their personal survival in knowing anything. That was refreshing and something 'Bee had rarely experienced among alien strangers since leaving home.

So all in all, knowing that they knew what he was – what Ironhide, Ratchet, Prime and Blaster respectively were – felt less dangerously exposed than it could have, he decided.

His comm line lit quietly just then, and he recognized the code. _Tapped my line already? _he accused the comm officer, though without ire.

_Just monitoring – I'm on duty, you know. And you turned your radio off five minutes ago_, Blaster replied.

_Just playing my part out here of four-wheel sideshow steal_.

_Then Sam and Mikaela...? _

_Having dinner and discussing our anatomically interesting points, as planned_, 'Bee answered blithely. Then more seriously: _What did you tell her? _

_As much of the truth as an hour and English allows, _Blaster said, and 'Bee fancied he could hear the air through the other's vents. _Planning to talk with them yourself?_

_If they ask._

_Will they?_

_Probably, _he admitted._ I told them they could._

There was a brief pause in the messaging, then: _You're going to file with Prime, then, for violating Protocol Two?_

_On our end, the damage is done, _'Bee replied, half argument, half statement. _Any further damage can only come from them telling someone else._

_Are you worried about that?_

_Are you?_

_I've given them our best reason to take Protocol Two seriously. They're thoughtful_, Blaster replied, though 'Bee rather thought an undercurrent of anxiety marred conviction.

_You should point that out to Prime, _he suggested helpfully.

_You want me to cite you? _Blaster asked, only half mockingly. Then: _ Do you think this will change anything? Change how they see us?_

_I'm not sure. We'll find out soon enough, I suppose. _Bumblebee paused a moment._ Should be interesting, being a modal species to somebody other than ourselves for once, even if through a sexed lens. _

_As long as we're a _modal_ species, not just another strange instance of sexuation, _the comm officer stressed.

_You're the one who's going by 'she' now to Mikaela_, 'Bee pointed out.

_That's different_, Blaster objected immediately, seeming just a bit defensive. Bumblebee obligingly let that stand, and after a moment, said:

_I doubt we'll ever truly be clear of that lens, personally_. _How long have we been out in the 'verse, after all, and are they any less modal to you or me despite knowing better?_

There was another short space of silence, during which 'Bee idly scanned the area, but found nothing other than the swirling electromagnetic eddies of cars and radio, and a couple of bats making the night echo. Then: _Ratchet wants a word, _Blaster announced,_ so I'd best sign off. Do me a favor, though, 'Bee. _

Mildly curious, Bumblebee replied: _Sure. What favor?_

_Since we likely can't be free of the lens... if they ask along a certain vector, don't go so far as to mention Ironhide, all right? _

And with that, Blaster was gone, leaving 'Bee no time to muster an appropriate response, for Ratchet did, indeed, want a word. Still, he took a moment to laugh quietly to himself before answering, and to shoot Blaster a quick message:

_Never fear, my friend – on that issue and its misconceptions, you two can speak for yourselves!__  
_

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Title of fic comes from Salt 'n Peppa's 1990 song. This story was originally conceived and published in 2008. Its third act just didn't want to play nice, as many readers noticed, however, so I removed it until I could revise it and find a better resolution. That took a lot longer than I'd imagined it would.

Many, many thanks to Sakon76, who has been instrumental in helping me finally to beat this into its current form; were it not for her, the third chapter could've sat on my hard drive for another year. It has been much improved thanks to her _–_ all its remaining flaws are my own.

On Blaster's appearance in this story – I needed someone whose original alt-mode was not a car or any sort of vehicle; he fit the bill. Otherwise, he got, as it were, 'Bayed', including the symbiont translation of being a cassette carrier. Sorry, Blaster-fans!

Finally, Lost One, since I have no e-mail address/PM options for you _–_ thank you for your thoughtful comments on the first two chapters. Your questions are dead on target _–_ the 'trumping' issue you identified proved in the end to be the most intractably difficult problem for me to address. I don't know if this chapter succeeds in defusing it or at least relativizing that issue in your estimation, but if it doesn't, it's not for lack of trying, just lack of skill at this point!


End file.
